“Among the scores of examples of mindless relativism on campus that I have seen, the one that haunts me the most comes from personal experience. During my time at Stanford Law School, when I took International Human Rights Law with Professor Thomas Ehrlich, there was a constant tension in the class between the value of human rights and a potent cultural relativism that insisted we had no right to judge the norms of other cultures.
“One day in class, this relativism was challenged by discussion of the practice of ‘female circumcision,’ the euphemistic term for female genital mutilation (FGM) , which in its various forms involves tearing or cutting out all of a girl’s clitoris or labia. The World Health Organization has rightfully described FGM as a horrific human rights violation, affecting between 100 and 140 million girls and women worldwide, according to the research.
“Nevertheless, one of my classmates disagreed that we should condemn it. The student was not a Muslim from a country that practiced FGM, but rather a white, probably upper-middle-class woman. She argued that there was no way we as Westerners could understand the ‘beauty’ of this practice and its cultural meaning and therefore we should not oppose it. I was stunned by how few people in the class were willing to challenge her. She had evoked the ‘beauty’ of another culture, and by some strange social compact we were not allowed to challenge that argument.”
-Greg Lukianoff
I find it so disturbing that people would actually disregard moral truths in place of that false, exaggerated sense of respect. Yet it seems that even in the most prestigious universities, people are reasoning out in favor of moral relativism.
Perhaps some are against moral objectivity out of an aversion towards fanaticism. But it doesn’t really follow that moral objectivity leads to fanaticism — it merely means adhering to a set of universal moral truths, the same way scientists insist that laws of physics exist. I mean, hardly anyone considered Newton a fanatic when he insisted that gravity was real.
| — | Fulton Sheen, in his essay “Love and Being in Love” |
“Pleasure is seeking; joy is a finding. He who thinks happiness is a pleasure must incessantly run from one stimulus to another, which is an indication of the fact that he has not yet found pleasure… Joy, on the contrary, is something that is found; it gives mental peace and repose, hence the Divine assurance that no one on earth can take away joy.
“Pleasure is built on self-seeking; joy is built on self-sacrifice. The wordling gets his pleasure by getting, and the more he gets, the more he feels he needs, for the simple reason that the more he gets, the less he really has… It is not so much that one wants more outside of himself; it is rather because one feels a greater emptiness on the inside.”
I’ve put off editing this story for more than a year, just letting it simmer at the back of my head, trying to see how I could improve it. I finally did get to work on it again some weeks ago when summer break started. And I guess this is a much cleaner piece. Not perfect, but much cleaner.
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After sitting in front of my laptop for hours squeezing my head dry throwing half-baked sentences at the screen, after tearing through my overdue library books for passages I could use, after watching my study table pile up with empty Cobra bottles, mountains of readings, unpaid condo bills, and disconnection notices, I finally asked myself:
Do I really give a shit about this paper?
I scrolled through my document from my introduction down to my last page, which was nearly spotless, save for a few lines clinging from the top margin. For a moment, I stared at the empty white space under it, wishing it was possible to just dive into that vast nothingness where there were no research papers, midterms, and board exams to worry about. Next thing I knew, I was closing my laptop and was resting my head on it, and soon I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When I woke up, it was already bright outside. The air was hot and humid, and my face was glued to the sweat on my arms. I reached for my phone buried under my readings and checked the time. It was already past 3pm. I had been asleep for more than ten hours! Hardly a minute passed when I realized another thing: that I had already missed the deadline for my paper. The strange part was, I didn’t feel a thing. No gush of panic through my chest, my heart not hammering like crazy like it should have been.
I stood up, stretched my arms, and then dragged myself to the tiny balcony of my condo unit, the space just enough for me to rest my arms on the ledge while watching the cars, trucks, and jeepneys on the road below. I found this especially soothing during the nighttime, seeing headlights like fireflies chasing each other under the calm dark sky. That Wednesday afternoon though, the traffic didn’t seem to move at all, as if the vehicles were trudging through thick mud under the heat of the 3pm sun.
I didn’t know what came to me at that time, but for a split second, as I stared at the pavement eight stories below me, I thought about jumping off. I imagined myself climbing the ledge and diving down head first with the wind zooming past my face, and then watching everything go dark in an instant as I hit the cement.
It seemed too crazy an idea though, so I decided to take a walk instead.
(Continue reading at: http://chololearnstowrite.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/anemptywhitespace/)
Finally decided to record this song, which some of my friends might be familiar with. :))
Moving Too Fast
Sunlight breaks into the atmosphere
It crawls past curtains, rouses people sleeping
Fresh morning dew it glitters on the grass
As traffic starts to pile up on the highway
Kids jump out of bed they’re late for school
Fathers down their coffees, disappear without goodbyes
Noises on the street it’s a busy day
People rushing ‘round, they’ve got no time to pause
It’s a new day, caught in trivial routines
Another new day to relive the same old scenes
These lives so wastefully consumed
Oh will we ever start anew?
Sunlight peeks behind the city line
And paints the edges of the high rise buildings
Look out your window, see the pretty sky
Look down below and see the error of our times
The birds they sing in praise for a new born day
Yet they are muted by the noise of busy streets
Slow down, watch your speed, and take a breath
We’re moving too fast to see what life is all about
It’s a new day, caught in trivial routines
Another new day to relive the same old scenes
These lives so wastefully consumed
Oh will we ever start anew?
Cause I don’t know what else to post. This is where I’ll dump all my non-instrumental music. Like with actual songwriting.
Fuzz is a funk-jazz outfit from Manila, Philippines.
In 2006, a bunch of dorks in a drama club decided to cover Dave Matthews and old school Hoobastank. From what started out a after school shenanigans, turned towards serious songwriting and giggage (n. the act of going to gigs.) In the beginning was high school and college therefore plenty of the gig opportunities were found in school fairs, debuts, and a few weddings here and there. But soon after, the band grew (and even lose a few members due to shifts career in focus) from a bunch of boys tooting their own horns and fiddling their little fiddles into serious broad-shouldered men of sexy. They’ve played at regular gig spots such as SaGuijo, Route 196, Conspiracy Bar. In 2008, Fuzz was a finalist at NU107 Rock Awards for its College Band of the Year award.
The Fuzz sound is implied by their genre. Funk + Jazz = Fuzz! (Don’t give me the Junk joke because I’ve heard them all!!!) The resulting songs are sometimes funky, sometimes jazzy but try to be something you haven’t heard before. When a group is composed of 9 men, the music will most definitely sound interesting. Or at least it shouldn’t sound like most of what’s out there. What the hell is Fuzz, you ask? Fuzz is a cornucopia of smooth sounds. Fuzz is cool urban living. Fuzz is phasers-set-to-sexy.
FUZZ is Mon San Sebastian (drums), Igo Gonzalez (lead guitar), Happy Alampay (lead/rhythm guitar), Caloy Soliongco (bass), JR Fernando (violin), Dino Santos (trumpet), Migi Soriano (alto sax), RJ Miso (tenor sax) and Joer Palma (vox)
